law or rights,” Akter recall Start working in her 2018 presentation, which was play as. An introduction to buy phone number list the online conference. “The only thing I had the understanding of was that these factory owners. Were so kind [that] they gave us jobs so I can fe my brother and sisters.”
Those “kind” factory owners were the same ones who paid her well below minimum wage, forc her to spend 12–16 hours a day working on her feet, and who physically abus her. She was just one of Bangladesh’s four million garment workers—85% of which are girls or women—who face such abuses.
According to Start working Akter, thousands of women
leave their countryside jobs in agriculture or as housemaids to migrate to the city to work in the factories. She said it is perceiv as a “respectable job,” through which you can elevate yourself.
“They have a big dream that it will change their life,” Akter said at the Voices 2018. “But as soon as they come to the industry, their dream gets broken.”
Their dreams of “economic freom and female empowerment” are replac with a dark reality; they receive around $68 per month in wages. It’s far from enough to cover the monthly cost of living in Dhaka, let alone if that woman has to provide for her family. Yet, the industry is the retaining customers is cheaper backbone of Bangladesh’s economy; it’s responsible for 80% of the country’s exports and worth about $25 billion.
Workers face enormous violence in these factories
inappropriate touch is common by the supervisors. Most of the time she doesn’t even know how to protest that,” said Akter. “If she talks, she loses her job—and she cannot afford that.”
Since 2000, Akter has devot her career to activism, but even in speaking up now, Akter has more on the line than just her job. She’s been target by the government be numbers and factory owners, who have press charges. In 2012, Akter’s colleague and labor union organizer Aminul Islam was abduct, tortur, and kill.